Americans are victims. From
Doctors that prescribe addictive pain killers like candy, health care is so
different from one person to another and also co-payments for prescription
plans can be so dramatically different in price even from one family to another. Who or what
is responsible for this mess? I blame it
all in part on mergers of big corporations that happen daily. Recently shareholders
voted on if health insurer Cigna should acquire Express Scripts for $67 billion
dollars. They did and now together under one roof they are the country’s largest
Pharmacy Benefit Manager or PBM. So now this merger, CVS Caremark and Optima RX are the biggest managers in
America that control about 80% of the market. As usual the average American who
has to pay a co-payment for their meds are screwed and victimized by just
another large corporation.
What is a PBM and why would a
company want to spend $67 Billion dollars to merge. Why do Americans have so
little money for medications but the big medication distributor companies have
$67 billion dollars to play with? Americans are victims. A PBM is like the
bouncer at the bar. They are the middle man to your meds. They control who gets
the meds for free and who has to pay hundreds of dollars for the same exact
bottle of medication and they get paid to do it. They are the middle man in
almost every transaction. PDMs process prescriptions for insurers and determine
which drugs get covered by insurance, how much insurers will pay for them, how
big your personal co-payment will be and they even influence which pharmacy you
will use.
Like bouncers at the bar, PBMs
have lists of which drugs insurance companies will or won’t cover and how much
you will pay for your pills. PBMs say these lists help patients get competitive
prices. But the drugs on these lists can also be good for drug companies and
often leads to more prescriptions. For certain drugs, when you fill your
prescription, drug companies pay the PBM a cut called a rebate. The FDA say
that these rebates keep drug prices high. The PBM’s deny that claim. The blame
the high prices for our meds is on the drug makers deal because they alone set
the cost. Small independent pharmacists are virtually out of business because
they just can’t compete with the big guy pharmacies.
If you thought the Mafia was a
racket, it is nothing compared to how Americans are being held hostage by
everything having to do with our health services. It is like going to a
restaurant where the prices for the food isn’t disclosed. We just don’t even
know what the hell that bottle of meds really costs. Arkansas became the first
state to regulate PBMs. Shouldn’t Congress get involved and pass some National
law on the problem? Nope. Our bloated rich Congressmen could care less about
the people they represent. They pass laws giving themselves full and completely
paid benefits from doctor’s care, hospital care and paid prescriptions paid to
them by the taxpayers. They literally are the Kings and we are the poor sick
towns folk on the other side of the moat protection their castle life.
We need lawmakers to get rid of
the entire co-payment system. We need to get rid of the Old turd richasaureses
in our government.
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